EFFICIENCY AND DISTRIBUTION IN CONTRACT FARMING: THE CASE OF INDIAN POULTRY GROWERS pdf

i ABSTRACT This paper is an empirical analysis of the gains from contract farming in the case of poultry production in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The paper finds that contract production is more efficient than noncontract production. The efficiency surplus is largely appropriated by the processor. Despite this, contract growers still gain appreciably from contracting in terms of lower risk and higher expected returns. Improved technology and production practices as well as the way in which the processor selects growers are what make these outcomes possible. In terms of observed and unobserved characteristics, contract growers have relatively poor prospects as independent growers. With contract production, these growers achieve incomes comparable to that of independent growers. Keywords: Contract Farming, Contracting, Poultry, Vertical Integration ii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 1 2. The Poultry Industry in Andhra Pradesh 3 3. Contracting in Poultry Production 4 4. Data and Descriptive Statistics 5 5. Is Contract Production more Efficient? 11 6. Do Contract Growers Earn More than Noncontract Growers? 18 7. Correcting for Self-Selection 20 8. Risk Shifting from Contracting 27 9. Concluding Remarks 32 References 35 iii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Access to Infrastructure 6 Table 2: Characteristics of Poultry Producers 7 Table 3: Input Use by Poultry Producers: Averages Per Production Cycle 8 Table 4: Output and Revenues: Averages Per Production Cycle 9 Table 5: Input Sharing: Averages per Production Cycle 10 Table 6: Cost structure of Poultry Production: Averages per Production Cycle 12 Table 7: Cost function of Poultry Producers 13 Table 8: Feed-Conversion Ratios 17 Table 9: Returns to Poultry Producers: Average Income Per Production Cycle (Rs/Kg) 22 Table 10: Income Equation: Ordinary Least Squares 23 Table 11: OLS estimates of Treatment Effects Under Varying Interest Rates 24 Table 12: Probit Equation: Factors Influencing Participation in Contracting 26 Table 13: Income Equation: Instrument Variables 26 Table 14: IV estimates of Treatment Effects Under Varying Interest Rates 27 Table 15: Variability of Returns 28 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Cost Function for Noncontract Producers 13 Figure 2: Cost Function for Contract Producers 14 1 EFFICIENCY AND DISTRIBUTION IN CONTRACT FARMING: THE CASE OF INDIAN POULTRY GROWERS Bharat Ramaswami 1 , Pratap Singh Birthal 2 , and P.K. Joshi 3 1. INTRODUCTION A feature of low productivity agricultural economies is the dominance of subsistence production especially among small growers. Even though commercialization can yield substantial gains, the transition from subsistence farming to market driven production is fraught with perils (von Braun and Kennedy, 1994). First, market volatility is an enduring feature of commodity and livestock markets. This makes cultivation of cash crops and livestock risky. Second, as incomes grow, consumer taste shifts in favor of processed foods. Small farmers are too remote from consumers to track their preferences. Third, small farmers typically lack capital and technical expertise to undertake cash crop and livestock production, which are usually more input intensive than subsistence crops. These problems are serious enough that they could effectively choke off participation in markets by all except the large farmers. In principle, contract farming could be an institutional arrangement that enables farmers to access markets. While contractual arrangements can vary by crop and by country, contracting is a form of joint production where the grower supplies tools, land, labor and management while the processor supplies technical assistance, some inputs such as seeds or pesticides and undertakes to buy the grower’s output at a pre-determined 1 Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, India. 2 National Fellow, National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi, India. 3 Research Fellow, IFPRI New Delhi Office, New Delhi, India. 2 price. From the point of view of the processor, this arrangement ensures raw material supplies of the desired quality (subject, of course, to production uncertainty). From the point of view of the grower, such an arrangement provides an assured market and hence reliable income (to the extent permitted by production risks). Without a contract, risks would be too much and few small growers would want to produce these crops. For this reason, Glover (1987) described contract farming as an institutional arrangement that combined the advantages of plantations (quality control, coordination of production and marketing) and of smallholder production (superior incentives, equity considerations). These theoretical benefits, notwithstanding, contract farming has been controversial and has been criticized for being exploitative (Little and Watts, 1994). Between the giant corporation and the small farmer, bargaining power surely lies with the former. Also, in practice, growers have encountered problems with respect to manipulation of quality standards, poor technical assistance, and sometimes plain cheating and deliberate default (Glover, 1987). As a result, Glover (1987) concluded that research must “systematically examine successes and failures and from then draw generalizations about the conditions under which CF (contract farming) can operate profitably and to the benefit of small farmers” (p 447). Taking this imperative seriously, this paper is an empirical analysis of the gains from contract farming, to both farmers and processors, in the case of poultry production in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The literature on contract farming is largely anecdotal possibly because of lack of data. Knoeber and Thurman (1995) and Warning and Key (2002) are two exceptions. Knoeber and Thurman analyzed the redistribution of 3 risk because of contracting in hog production in U.S.A. Warning and Key estimated the change in producer incomes from contracting by peanut producers in Senegal. Here we draw upon a survey of contract and noncontract poultry producers to analyze both of these issues. Neither of these papers, however, considers the gains to the processors from contracting. 2. THE POULTRY INDUSTRY IN ANDHRA PRADESH The poultry industry has seen rapid growth in India. Between 1980/81 and 1998/99, poultry meat production increased about 3 times from 250,000 tons to about 770,000 tons. 4 Correspondingly, its share of total meat output rose from 20% to 27%. During the same period, egg production increased from 10,000 to 29,000 million. Andhra Pradesh is the leading poultry meat producing state within India. It accounts for over one-fifth of poultry meat as well as egg production in the country. The growth of poultry industry in Andhra Pradesh has been even more remarkable than the national growth rates. For the period 1980/81 to 1998/99, poultry meat production increased by 4.5 times while egg production rose by 3.5 times. About 30% of its broiler output and 15% of egg output are exported to other states within India. The impressive growth in the poultry meat industry is the result of technological breakthroughs in breeding, feeding and health, and sizeable investments from the private sector. The expansion in supply has been spurred by rising incomes and has resulted in lower poultry prices in south India where much of the growth has occurred (USDA, 4 The USDA estimates poultry production in 2002 to be of the order of 1.4 million tons, which is higher than the official estimates (USDA, 2004). 4 2004). The poultry sector is, however, highly prone to production and market risks, which periodically affect the profitability of broiler production particularly on the small farms. These risks also threaten the profitability of the industry engaged in breeding of chicks and manufacturing of feed, vaccines and medicines. In order to minimize the risks to the producers and sustain the profitability of the industry, some large poultry firms (for example, Venkateshawara Hatcheries Ltd., Suguna Hatcheries, Pioneer Hatcheries, Diamond Hatcheries, etc.) began integrating their activities with that of broiler production through the institution of contract farming as early as in late 1980s. A large- scale integrated operation would typically include the raising of grandparent and parent flocks, rearing of day-old-chicks, feed milling, provision of veterinary services and contract production. Such integrators are most common in southern and western regions of the country (USDA, 2004). 3. CONTRACTING IN POULTRY PRODUCTION In a poultry contract, hatcheries provide day-old chicks, feed and medicines to contract growers. The contract growers supply land, labor and other variable inputs (like electricity). At the end of the production cycle, the farmer receives a net price (by weight) that is pegged to an industry price set by a group of hatcheries (not the retail price). The industry price fluctuates within a narrow range and is a lot more stable than the retail price. Thus, the farmer receives considerable price insurance. For sharp upward deviations of the retail price from the industry price, farmers receive an incentive. [...]... labor, and other variable inputs such as electricity and disinfectants Using the information on input sharing, Table 5 computes the total value of variable inputs and the value of inputs supplied by the grower For the farmers not on contract, the two figures are the same But this is not so for contract growers For them, the processor supplies most of the inputs measured in value terms On average, the. .. The final section of the survey is relevant only to contract farmers and it obtained information about the contract between the producer and the processor In particular, this section contains information about the nature of input sharing between the producer and the processor As noted in the earlier section, processors supply chicks, medicine, feed and veterinary services Growers supply land, buildings,... noncontract growers respectively They are estimated as the sample means of the σ i ’s and vi’s and are reported in the first two rows (and second and third columns) of Table 15 The computations assume the lowest possible interest rate of 15% per annum The table also reports the standard errors of these estimates The figures show that the variability of returns of noncontract growers exceed that of contract growers. .. of the actual series For each individual grower we compute the ratio of the standard deviation of the simulated series to the standard deviation of the observed series For the 25 contract growers, the average of this ratio is 13.4 The median ratio is 8.25 and the distribution ranges from a minimum value of 2.7 to a maximum value of 91 At the median level, growers under contracting bear only 12% of the. .. veterinary fees, labor, electricity and disinfectants For contact growers, however, the processor advances most of the value of inputs Compared to the noncontract grower, the contract grower needs less working capital and therefore incurs lower interest costs Information on the opportunity cost of funds for contract and noncontract farmers is, however, missing in the survey From studies of rural finance,... CONTRACTING Calculating the mean income gains from contracting provides only a partial picture of the change in utility for contracting producers As mentioned before, a fundamental feature of contract farming is the shifting of risk from producers to processors In the broiler contract, much of the price risk is reduced by the use of the bro-mark (set by the processors) rather than the market price The most straightforward... price and the feed quantity used by contract growers to recalculate their feed and medicine costs that would obtain if they were charged the same prices for feed and medicine as noncontract growers To these costs, we add the observed costs for chicks and other inputs that are incurred by contract growers and we thus obtain a simulated figure for total costs for each production cycle of the contract 2 The. .. (81) Output x Contract -.029 (-3.9) Dummy 0.983 R2 # Observations 145 t-statistics in parentheses 17 6 DO CONTRACT GROWERS EARN MORE THAN NONCONTRACT GROWERS? In the earlier section, we analyzed the relative efficiency of the contract production system taking into account the costs to both growers and processors Here we consider contracting from the point of view of growers alone Do contract growers earn... evaluate production efficiency from the point of view of the processor As a processor has the choice of contracting with growers or procuring the bird from noncontracted growers, contract production should reduce processor’s costs if it is to be observed The efficiency of contract production is therefore evaluated relative to the production costs of independent growers Costs in contract production... of the simulated series for the ith producer Also let sc denote the mean standard deviation for the group of contract growers This is reported in the last column of Table 15 The variability of the simulated series is of the same order of magnitude as the variability of returns for noncontract growers On average, the standard deviation of the simulated series is more than 8 times greater than that of . analysis of the gains from contract farming in the case of poultry production in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The paper finds that contract. breeding of chicks and manufacturing of feed, vaccines and medicines. In order to minimize the risks to the producers and sustain the profitability of the industry,